The Grand Tour

This past week my mom and I embarked upon a whirlwind touring spree of the city.  The first one (and one of my favorites) was of Grand Central.  Knowing nothing about the building going into the tour, I managed to not only orient myself (with the exception of where the metro exits lead up to, on those I still take a random guess and follow the suits to the great hall- but to be fair the metro was not covered on the tour) but also have a newfound respect for the building itself.  I'll give a few of the tour highlights:

1. Grand Central not too long ago went through a complete restoration that pretty much was just washing the grime off of everything with soap and water.  Before this, the powers that be had just left it without any maintenance in the hopes that New Yorkers would determine it was outdated and needed to come down.  This way they could build larger and more profitable buildings in its place.  This tactic sadly worked for Penn Station.  Finally they did go for the restoration and cleaned the entire place... almost.  They actually left a small square on the ceiling of the great hall uncleaned so that you can see the difference.  If you check out the picture I posted and follow the line that runs through the crab down to the bottom right of the photo, just to the left of where the line comes to an end is the small dirty rectangle.  

2. The entire building of Grand Central is three stories up from the ground.  In fact, a good chunk of Park Avenue is three stories up.  There is an entire train yard down there.  The buildings are rooted through the pavement on steel beams.  This is why the ground shakes so much on Park.  Also, it is why you can't take an elevator in the buildings in that area until you take an escalator up to the second floor (elevators require one floor of space below the bottom level for all the mechanical parts).  If you walk out on Park Avenue and look East or West you can see that you are up on a hill.  It's not a natural hill, it is because you are on a platform hovering above an entire train yard!

3.  There are translucent catwalks between the East and West walls of the great hall.  These are here because original plans of the terminal called for a luxury hotel to be built on top, and it would help guests walk through without having to go into the terminal.  But for some reason it was never built.  You used to be able to walk through them on yours, but unfortunately they have been closed to the public since 9/11.

MOMA and Roller-Dancing

Well the past few days have been pretty busy so here is a quick update of the highlights:

On Friday I went with my friend Corwin to the Museum of Modern Art (which is free on Friday's after 4).  We made it through the top three floors (including lots of Dali, Picasso, Warhol, Miro, and many many others) and then decided considering we live here, we would come back for the rest.  It's nice to have that option considering the top three floors of MOMA is really the half way point.

Saturday I went to Central Park with a few friends and was introduced to the wonderful world of roller-dancing.  It might be my favorite thing about New York so far.  For those of you like me who did not know what this is, roller-dancing is exactly what it sounds like- dancing around on roller skates.  It seems to be best preformed in elaborate costumes... bonus points if you incorporate hats and/or live animals.  People of all ages participate and are obviously in great shape and surprisingly agile (as can be seen in the photos).  We think these people have more fun than anyone else in the city.  We have plans to acquire costumes and skates and join the party with Devan (Elyssa's sister) for her birthday that is coming up.  Stay tuned for that post.  Meanwhile I tried to get a few photos of it for everyone to see, but I forgot my camera so forgive the quality as this is from my phone.  Also here is a link to a video that gives you an idea of what goes on.

In the beginning...

Hello everyone!

 

I know I'm a little late to get this going, but it has been a very busy week!  I flew in to New York last Friday, just in time to see the 4th of July fireworks over the East River.  Unfortunately, it was a little bit rainy, so our view was blocked by some cloud cover and a few poorly placed umbrellas.  Even so it was still a patriotic start in city.  

Joey and I found a place to stay on Saturday, the first day we started looking!  We love our new place and we are all set to move in in about one week.  We are moving to Tribeca (on the map I posted it's the teal neighborhood at the South West tip of the island), and we love the neighborhood and how central it is- close to almost all of the subway lines!  Here is the link to our new building. We have one of the alcove studios.

Right now I'm staying at my friend Elyssa's apartment (she and her sister are double-leased right now so I have my own room and bathroom before I move into the new apartment).  It is a three bedroom but right now it is just me and Elyssa's old roommate Rebecca who is packing up to move home to Louisiana.  Her place where I am staying now is in Gramercy (the hot pink square on the map South East of Midtown) just on the border of Stuyvesant Town (where Elyssa and her sister moved to and live now).  Stuyvesant Town was built in 1947 for WWII vets and their families.  The apartments are now being bought up and remodeled and are a trendy place to live because of their relatively large size.  I can see Stuy town across the street from my living room and bedroom windows here.  I can also see double-decker busloads of people at eye-level thanks to my second story location (see the photo at left). 

The past few days I have been job hunting and orienting myself in the city.  It helps that I have a lot of friends up here that I can hang out with after they get home from work!  Please keep the phone calls and emails coming!  I would love to hear from all of you.

Much Love,

Karen